Thursday, January 10, 2013

A long document on a computer may become difficult to read when this reading has to go for hours together or you may have pronunciation problems when you read. Apart from this, a person may be visually challenged and it may not be possible for him to read an essential document on a computer at all.

Instead of straining your eyes reading a document, you have a simple solution that comes in the form of Text to Speech tools. These are applications installed on the PC which can actually read out a text document on your computer in various voices, at varied speeds and at variety of pitch levels. For non-professional use, there are various freeware text to speech utilities available online today. A few have been reviewed below,

iSpeech is the best Text to Speech online utility that i have found ever, It allows you to convert text into natural human voices from a list of voices online and download them to your computer. They also have the facility of converting your uploaded documents into voices. The negative point in it is that a free account allows you to convert voices upto 1min only, However a paid account offers unlimited time.

But for your browser they have an extension by which you can select a particular text and read it aloud. For Chrome Download it from Here.

Ultra Hal Text to Speech Reader is a freeware utility by Zabaware which includes high quality voices in which the text can be read. The main advantage of this program is that it can read text from a variety of sources like e-books, clipboard, documents as well as instant chat messages. Overall, it is a good application if you want proof reading of your documents. You can even save the speech in WAV format for listening later.

Speakonia by CFS-Technologies is another freeware text to speech utility. It comes with around 20 different voices with strong robotic accents with good punctuation. The program interface is clear and straightforward; you simply select text in any document and press Ctrl+C to read it aloud. You can easily change the pitch and speed of speech. It can read text from many sources like HTML text documents, clipboard contents and e-mails. But it's main drawback is that it cannot record speech for which you may require a third party software.

SmartRead 0.80 by SmartySoft is freeware text reading utility. It has clear voice support in english and chinese languages. It can start reading a document from any point randomly by placing cursor or mouse pointer anywhere in the document and is a quick and easy way for reading a document. If there is any problem in the speech engine then it has a special repair function that automatically corrects any problems in the same.

5.) Free NaturalReader 11:
NaturalReader is a text-to-speech software with natural sounding voices. This easy-to-use software can read to you any text such as Microsoft Word files, webpages, PDF files, and E-mails. NaturalReader can also convert any written text into audio files such as MP3 or WAV.

Don't forget to "+1" this post or to comment if you found this useful! :)

8
comments:

Very useful. I have tried out some of the online services, and they are good too. Have always thought about local apps that can do it, but did not get a list like this till now. Will be trying out. Maybe a post on some ideas for free hosting for the audio files?

Hi, I suffer from ADHD, and i use text to speech as a way to improve my lifestyle. For most webpages, i use Evernote Clearly, and if i read content on my ipad, i use the stock text to speech function. I however, miss a desktop application that provides TTS functionality along with live highlighting plus allowing the user to highlight text manually. Any desktop program that offers all these features?

iSpeech (which is what Evernote Clearly uses for text to speech) also offers the Select and Speak Chrome extension which allows you to highlight text on webpages and have it read out loud. They also offer a service which allows you to upload documents and have them converted into mp3 files that you can download. You can find the Select and Speak extension here: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/select-and-speak/gfjopfpjmkcfgjpogepmdjmcnihfpokn

Thank you for your response Marcos, but i don't need a web alternative, since i have Clearly already installed, and it has a smoother integration to Evernote. I actually need a desktop based app that will function even when there is no internet. Is there any app for that?